26
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 22, 2013
A rally in support of the deposed President, Mohamed Morsi, a day after soldiers and police killed dozens of pro-Morsi protesters.
LETTER FROM CAIRO
THE SHOWDOWN
Winners and losers in Egypt's ongoing revolution.
BY PETER HESSLER
On July 1st, after the Egyptian mili-
tary issued its ultimatum, and
crowds of celebrating people began to
stream into Tahrir Square, I walked down
the street to the headquarters of Tamar-
rod, a political-activist group. A neat line
of Apache helicopters flew overhead,
trailing Egyptian flags. Everywhere
around me, citizens were chanting, "The
people and the Army are one hand!" The
previous month had been full of rumors,
and the last time that the Minister of De-
fense, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, had
issued a public statement, a week earlier,
it had been cryptic enough that it was wel-
comed by both the opponents and the
supporters of President Mohamed Morsi.
But this time the military's intentions
couldn't have been clearer. The armed
forces had given the President forty-eight
hours to respond to the protesters' de-
mands, and if he didn't, they said, "it will
be incumbent upon us . . . to announce a
road map for the future."
All of this had started with Tamarrod,
which means Rebellion. In late April, five
activists, who ranged in age from twenty-
two to thirty, had come up with the idea of
a petition campaign that rejected Morsi's
Presidency. He had been elected less than
a year earlier, the first Egyptian leader to be
chosen after the revolution of 2011 toppled
the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Morsi was
a longtime member of the Muslim Broth-
erhood, the Islamist organization that had
been banned and repressed by the old re-
gime; he was briefly jailed during the rev-
olution. He ran for President against a for-
mer Air Force commander, and there had
been concerns about whether the election
would be stolen, since the military was
governing Egypt during the transition pe-
riod. But Morsi won a vote that was widely
hailed as free and fair, and crowds sponta-
neously gathered in Tahrir to celebrate
PHOTOGRAPH BY MOISES SAMAN
MAGNUM